Can renewables power post-nuclear Germany? by Erik Gawel & Sebastian Strunz

The Conversation

When the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan was hit by a tsunami in March 2011, the disaster had a profound effect on German energy policy. Chancellor Angela Merkel reasoned that “Fukushima has forever changed the way we define risk in Germany.”

Three days after the news of meltdown in three of Fukushima’s reactors, Chancellor Merkel drew a line under German nuclear power. The seven oldest nuclear power plants in Germany were immediately taken off the grid, and two months later the government made this permanent. The remaining German nuclear power plants, it was decided, would be shut down by 2022.

This decision was a spectacular policy U-turn, as the same conservative government had only recently overturned an earlier attempt to ban nuclear power in Germany. In 2010, Chancellor Merkel’s coalition had argued that nuclear power was a “bridge technology”necessary to pave the way towards a carbon-free energy system. The prolonged use of nuclear power would be indispensable in order to guarantee security of supply, it was claimed.

This raises two questions: did removing seven power plants endanger the security of supply to the German national grid? And what convincing long-term strategy is there in place to manage the shift to carbon-free energy without nuclear power?

The loss of the power stations cut the nuclear contribution to the country’s energy by about a quarter, from 22% in 2010 to 16% in 2012. Yet Germany is still a net exporter of electricity, and the power not generated due to the shutdown has not led to a requirement to import foreign nuclear power. The key findings of a detailed study by the Institute for Applied Ecology on this matter clearly demonstrated this, where the authors stated that: “The existence of power imports is not an indication that the (domestic) security of supply is in jeopardy. The shutdown of nuclear power plants has not resulted in increased imports of power from foreign nuclear power plants and thus has not been counterbalanced by foreign power imports.”